or caprice, the common interest of learning requires. that her fons should ceafe from inteftine hoftilities, and instead of facrificing each other to malice and contempt, endeavour to avert perfecution from the meaneft of their fraternity. NUMB. 146. SATURDAY, August 10, 1751. N Sunt illic duo, trefve, qui revolvant 'Tis poffible that one or two MART. F: LEWIS. ONE of the projects or defigns which exercife the mind of man are equally fubject to obftructions and difappointments with the purfuit of fame. Riches cannot easily be denied to them who have fomething of greater value to offer in exchange; he whose fortune is endangered by litigation, will not refuse to augment the wealth of the lawyer; he whose days are darkened by languor, or whofe nerves are excruciated by pain, is compelled to pay tribute to the science of healing. But praise may be always omitted without inconvenience. When once a man has made celebrity neceffary to his happiness, he has put it in the power of the weakest and most timorous malignity, if not to take away his fatisfacVOL. VII. D tion, in tion, at least to withhold it. His enemies. may dulge their pride by airy negligence, and gratify their malice by quiet neutrality. They that could never have injured a character by invectives, may combine to annihilate it by filence; as the women. of Rome threatened to put an end to conqueft and dominion, by supplying no children to the commonwealth. When a writer has with long toil produced a work intended to burst upon mankind with unexpected luftre, and withdraw the attention of the learned world from every other controverfy or enquiry, he is feldom contented to wait long without the enjoy→ ment of his new praises. With an imagination full of his own importance, he walks out like a monarch in disguise, to learn the various opinions of his readers. Prepared to feaft upon admiration; composed to encounter cenfures without emotion, and determined not to fuffer his quiet to be injured by a fenfibility too exquifite of praise or blame, but to laugh with equal contempt at vain objections and injudicious commendations, he enters the places of mingled converfation, fits down to his tea in an obscure corner, and while he appears to examine a file of antiquated journals, catches the converfation of the whole room. He liftens, but hears no mention of his book, and therefore fuppofes that he has difappointed his curiofity by delay; and that as men of learning would naturally begin their converfation with fuch a wonderful novelty, they had digreffed to other subjects before his arrival. The company difperfes, and their places are fupplied by others equally ignorant, or equally careless. The fame expectation hurries him to to another place, from which the fame disappointment drives him foon away. His impatience then grows violent and tumultuous; he ranges over the town with restlefs curiofity, and hears in one quarter of a cricket-match, in another of a pick-pocket; is told by fome of an unexpected bankruptcy; by others of a turtle feaft; is fometimes provoked by importunate enquiries after the white bear, and fometimes with praises of the dancing dog; he is afterwards entreated to give his judgment upon a wager about the height of the Monument; invited to fee a footrace in the adjacent villages; defired to read a ludicrous advertisement; or confulted about the most effectual method of making enquiry after a favourite cat. The whole world is bufied in affairs, which he thinks below the notice of reasonable creatures, and which are nevertheless fufficient to withdraw all regard from his labours and his merits. He refolves at laft to violate his own modefty, and to recall the talkers from their folly by an enquiry after himself. He finds every one provided with an anfwer; one has seen the work advertised, but never met with any that had read it; another has been so often impofed upon by fpecious titles, that he never buys a book till its character is established; a third wonders what any man can hope to produce after fo many writers of greater eminence; the next has enquired after the author, but can hear no account of him, and therefore fufpects the name to be fictitious; and another knows him to be a man condemned by indigence to write top frequently what he does not understand. 1 Many are the confolations with which the unhappy author endeavours to allay his vexation, and fortify his patience. He has written with too little indulgence to the understanding of common readers; he has fallen upon an age in which folid knowledge, and delicate refinement, have given way to low merriment, and idle buffoonery, and therefore no writer can hope for distinction, who has any higher purpofe than to raise laughter. He finds that his enemies, such as fuperiority will always raise, have been industrious, while his performance was in the prefs, to vilify and blast it; and that the bookfeller, whom he had refolved to enrich, has rivals that obftruct the circulation of his copies. He at last reposes upon the confideration, that the nobleft works of learning and genius have always made their way flowly against ignorance and prejudice; and that reputation, which is never to be loft, must be gradually obtained, as animals of longeft life are obferved not foon to attain their full stature and strength. By fuch arts of voluntary delusion does every man endeavour to conceal his own unimportance from himself. It is long before we are convinced of the small proportion which every individual bears to the collective body of mankind; or learn how few can be interested in the fortune of any fingle man; how little vacancy is left in the world for any new object of attention; to how small extent the brightest blaze of merit can be spread amidst the mists of business and of folly; and how foon it is clouded by the intervention of other novelties. Not only the writer of books, but the commander of armies, and the deliverer of nations, will eafily outlive all noify and popular popular reputation: he may be celebrated for a time by the publick voice, but his actions and his name will foon be confidered as remote and unaffecting, and be rarely mentioned but by those whose alliance gives them fome vanity to gratify by frequent commemoration. It seems not to be fufficiently considered how little renown can be admitted in the world. Mankind are kept perpetually bufy by their fears or defires, and have not more leisure from their own affairs, than to acquaint themselves with the accidents of the current day. Engaged in contriving fome refuge from calamity, or in fhortening the way to fome new poffeffion, they feldom fuffer their thoughts to wander to the past or future; none but a few folitary students have leisure to enquire into the claims of ancient heroes or fages; and names which hoped to range over kingdoms and continents fhrink at laft into cloisters or colleges. Nor is it certain, that even of these dark and narrow habitations, these last retreats of fame, the poffeffion will be long kept. Of men devoted to literature very few extend their views beyond fome particular science, and the greater part feldom enquire, even in their own profeffion, for any authors but those whom the prefent mode of study happens to force upon their notice; they defire not to fill their minds with unfashionable knowledge, but contentedly refign to oblivion those books which they now find çenfured or neglected. The hope of fame is neceffarily connected with fuch confiderations as muft abate the ardor of confidence, and repress the vigour of pursuit. Who |